Chapter 29 Baird
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BAIRD
The past week had been a blur. I was an optimist, so the good far outweighed the bad, and thankfully, Maia seemed to feel the same way.
I kept glancing at her as I drove through Falkirk, watching her curious expression as she took in the town where I grew up.
She’d told me she’d never been here before, so I promised her we’d drive down to see the Kelpies, our most visited tourist landmark, once we’d had dinner with my family.
Ainsley had a work thing so she couldn’t make it this time, which was probably a good thing since she was the reason Maia and I had to jam a second family dinner into an already packed week when all we wanted to do was fuck. That was the straight-up truth. The woman made me horny all the time.
I put a leash on it, though, knowing we were heading to my childhood home.
Instead, I wondered what Maia was thinking and hoped it was all about the present and not about some of the shitty things that had happened this week.
Last Sunday we’d done the second video shoot for the venue part of the campaign, including filming at Blantyre.
Good news was Pennington’s went for our idea, and we were now going to get free marketing for our hotel.
Bad news was when the video went live, we discovered the film crew had included private footage.
Neither of us really wanted to look at the campaign posts. Maia, however, gave into her curiosity and had scrolled through the comments during her lunch break.
There were comments like:
Ugh, this is obviously so fake. I want to see REAL people getting married.
Eh … like Maia and I weren’t real people. What the actual fuck?
He’s so hot. He could do way better than her.
Why did women do that to each other? Especially when it was straight-up bullshit.
There are people dying in the world. Maybe talk about that!
So, because it’s just occurred to you that people die, you don’t want anyone to talk about anything else ever? Make that make sense.
And then there were nice comments like:
They look so in love. I want this!
And then confusing comments like this:
I think my ovaries just exploded.
I’m afraid to admit how many times I’ve rewatched that kiss.
Find a guy who kisses you like this!
That kiss was a bit NSFW, no??
It was that last comment that prompted Maia to watch the video because our kisses for the camera were polite.
She’d then called to tell me to watch the video.
One of the fucking cameramen had followed me and Maia at the venue where I dragged her into the ballroom to kiss the life out of her.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the kiss was hot.
But it was a private moment that should not have been part of the footage.
It was the kind of kiss some sickos might get their rocks off to, and I didn’t want anyone seeing my fiancée like that.
Maia requested a meeting with her boss Hilary, I joined in via video call, and we pretty much demanded nothing like that ever happen again. Hilary was apologetic and assured us she’d talk to marketing, the director, and the crew, and also to legal.
Marketing responded by being total dicks, insisting that the kiss made the video go viral.
Thankfully, legal assured them they were opening themselves up to a lawsuit if they pulled anything like that a-fucking-gain since it clearly stated in the contract that Maia and I only agreed to use of permissible footage.
Since he’d filmed us behind our backs like a fucking creep, it was not permissible.
I went a step further and asked for a new cameraman and I also insisted we see the final posts before they were published.
I’d never cared before about anything I did making it into public consumption.
But I cared about people witnessing intimate moments between me and Maia.
Moments that were supposed to be ours. I cared that because some bitchy twit called Becky had a problem with My that we were in this situation in the first place, swinging Maia’s arse out there for anyone to make shitty comments about her or use content of her for their own perverse desires.
I couldn’t protect her from that, and it fucked with my head more than I expected.
It was one of the reasons I hadn’t told her that the tabloid media had started planting themselves outside the club every morning before training, hounding me about the campaign and about my “sordid” past.
I’d looked up that word and I did not think my past was sordid. Since when did having sex and partying here and there become a bad thing in the twenty-first century? Fucking tabloid journos twisted everything.
Another crap thing that happened was that Pennington’s informed us they’d booked our date for the bungee jump.
Now that I was in my right mind again, there was no bloody way I was putting Maia at risk by throwing us off a platform suspended forty meters above a river.
Maia, however, decided she wanted to do it.
We got into an argument, which I hated. She insisted Will had made her feel boring and unadventurous, and she’d like to prove to herself that she wasn’t.
Who could argue with that? I put my overprotectiveness to one side and realized that my inability to say no to this woman did not bode well for me in the future.
Though ultimately it wasn’t up to me whether she did the bungee jump.
She was a grown woman, and it was her decision.
Whether I liked it or not.
The fact that when we went to dinner at her parents’ house and her dad found out and wasn’t happy about it almost made me want to throw my support behind him …
until I saw the sheen of tears in Maia’s eyes as she argued her point.
She wasn’t getting upset to get her way.
Maia often got teary when she was frustrated, which just frustrated her even more.
I thought it was adorable, though I knew better than to tell her that.
Other than the bungee jump discussion, dinner with her parents and Lockie went well.
Lockie was a bit in awe of me, so I tried to make him comfortable and answered his million questions about football and the Professional League.
Maia’s dad treated me with an assessing politeness, but he warmed up toward the end of the dinner and joined me and Lockie in our discussions.
Maia’s stepmum Grace was a sweetheart, as always. She was one of the classiest women I’d ever met and had one of those posh English accents that made everything she said sound smart as fuck. She and Maia had a bond that transcended blood, and I decided Grace MacLeod had my loyalty for life.
Ainsley, of course, had then let it slip to my mum that we’d had the long overdue family dinner, and Mum’s response was worse than if she’d just been annoyed.
No. She sounded butt hurt instead and I couldn’t handle that, so I asked Maia if we could do dinner at my mum’s Friday night.
Maia’s answer was an instant “Of course.”
So here we were.
We slowed to a stop outside my grandparents’ house. “This is it.”
Maia looked up at the end-of-terrace home with its large front bay window.
At her silence, I asked, “What are you thinking?”
She turned to me. “That this seems like a nice house, a nice street, to grow up on.”
Emotion clogged my throat. To most folk, this was a modest house on a modest street. Totally ordinary. Nothing special.
Maia saw a family home. A street where kids could play safely together.
She saw that because she’d grown up in a dangerous, poverty-stricken area of Glasgow, never feeling safe inside or outside her home.
And I hated it.
I wish I could erase every second of the first fifteen years of her life.
Yet I also knew Maia wouldn’t be Maia without them. Life’s twisted sense of humor. Because she was a kinder person for having experienced those years.
“It was,” I answered roughly.
It was getting harder and harder to hold back those three little words.
“Let’s go in.”
Maia had met my mum at the hospital when I was injured, but she hadn’t met my grandparents.
In her usual dry tone that confused most folk, Gran couldn’t stop commenting on how beautiful Maia was.
I could see not only was Maia embarrassed, but she wasn’t sure if she was being complimented.
I made a crack about it giving me a complex, like she was too gorgeous for me or something, and Gran laughed.
She also didn’t say it again, though she kept glancing at Maia in this searching way that I knew Maia probably thought was assessing.
But she looked at Ainsley the same way. My gran liked what she saw in Maia.
Which made me want to puff up my chest in pride because as much as their opinion wouldn’t change my feelings for Maia, I did care what my family thought.
Granddad kept sharing conspiratorial looks with me as if to say Well done, my boy. I grinned, chuffed to fucking bits.
I knew Maia was nervous because she told me she was, but I also witnessed it in her slightly strained smiles.
Over time, because my family was friendly, she relaxed more and let her personality shine.
She cracked jokes, and when Gran teased her with her dry sense of humor, Maia teased right back, which Gran loved.
They asked her about her job and about the campaign and about us.
It was good.
It made the last amazing week with her feel more real.
Sometimes I still couldn’t bloody believe it. I’d wanted her for so long.
After dinner Maia offered to help Mum with the dishes. I got up to help too, but Mum pressed a hand to my shoulder. “You keep your grandparents company.”
It occurred to me a bit belatedly that Mum might be mumming in the kitchen. And by that, I meant switching on momma bear mode. Fuck.
“I need another drink. Want anything?”
My granddad shook his head while Gran muttered, “Took him long enough.”
I took that to mean she knew Mum was up to something.
Fuck.
Trying not to hurry, I stepped out of the living room and into the hall and froze at what I heard from the kitchen.
“What I’m trying to say, Maia, is that you seem like a nice girl, but I need to know you’re in this for real before Baird gets hurt.”
Fuck!
I moved to step into the room, but Maia’s response stopped me on the threshold. Their backs were to me as they stood at the sink.
“I would never hurt Bear,” she replied vehemently, sounding offended. “He’s my favorite person in the whole world.”
My chest tightened. In a good way.
“Bear?” Mum asked.
“I call him Bear. Because he gives good bear hugs.”
Mum laughed softly. “He does. He always has.”
“His hugs make me feel safe,” Maia continued quietly.
“Your son is one of the best humans I’ve ever met.
He makes me feel good about myself, he makes me feel safe to just be me, but he also makes me feel like I can be more than who I am right now.
Like there’s more in me and I don’t have to be afraid to explore that with him. It’s exciting. It’s …” She trailed off.
My heart was in my fucking throat.
Blood whooshed in my ears.
Hope grew so big inside me I could barely breathe around it.
“You should tell him that,” Mum said, her profile soft. “He deserves to hear it.”
I cleared my throat. “I just did.”
Maia whirled on a gasp while Mum beamed from ear to ear. She looked between us, at Maia’s pink cheeks, and then at me. Whatever she saw on my face made her bridge the distance between us. Mum stroked the back of her knuckles over my cheek. “I’m so pleased for you, sweetheart.”
I nodded because I didn’t think I could get the words out.
Then she looked back at Maia. “Did you know your wedding invitations ask the guests to RSVP in just one week?”
The abrupt change in conversation made Maia blink rapidly. “No. What? One week?” Her shoulders slumped. “Unfortunately, none of the decisions regarding the wedding are ours to make. Part of the agreement.”
“Not even your dress?” Mum was aghast.
“Thankfully, since I’m the bridal buyer for Pennington’s, there are very few gowns I don’t like in our collection.”
Mum hmm’d and then patted my shoulder as she passed.
I knew that noise. Just as I saw the sadness and frustration on My’s face. It hadn’t bothered me when we made the deal with Pennington’s. I hadn’t thought beyond using the campaign as a way to show Maia what was really between us.
But hearing her say those phenomenal things about how I made her feel … knowing that this was real between us … it was shit that Maia didn’t get to choose how our wedding would go down. Mum clearly thought so too.
And this was it.
Me and Maia … it would take an apocalyptic event to end us, and maybe not even then. Which meant our wedding was going to happen and we would be legally married. And it wouldn’t even feel like us.
I could practically hear my mum telling me to fix it.
I just didn’t know how.
Yet.